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The entire innovation of ridesharing was taxi dispatch, with a smartphone. It was only a slight incremental improvement over the existing state-of-the art. More

The entire innovation of ridesharing was taxi dispatch, with a smartphone. It was only a slight incremental improvement over the existing state-of-the art. More convenient access to "rides" is a bandaid on the mistake of building communities for cars instead of people, with systems that by their very nature concentrate wealth and encourage poverty. I started driving for the taxi company in 2012 [0]. The company already had a GPS-enabled dispatch system. The whole metropolitan area was split into 2 mile x 2 mile Zones. This was how fare dispatching worked from the drivers' POV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmm3kECLxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVmm3kECLxw @WrathOfGnon comments on traditional development. Ex: "The organic way of city growth: mature cities, rather than growing like a cancer out of their bounds and limits, send out colonies to form new ones. Léon Krier illustrated it thus: [...]" - https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1149093724137242624 https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1149093724137242624 Most of Phoenix was developed in the post-WWII period. Modern Phoenix is entirely dependent on cars and air conditioning. It's not very human-friendly. If our dear leaders wanted to deal with the "transportation" problem, they'd start with the economic insecurity of those at the bottom, who are living from week to week. At the end of my taxi driving period (when my roommate was no longer paying their half of rent), I was driving for 2 weeks to make rent, then 2 weeks for the rest of my expenses. "What an excellent starting line: 'The problem of poverty must, by its very nature, be one of vital importance to any civilized community.'" https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1599036434765451264 https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/1599036434765451264 If housing was built around "cooperatives", people's best financial option would be living in a compact environment where you don't need a car, rather than moving out into the suburbs & commuting 1 hour to work. But housing is an exercise in wealth concentration, where the only way for most of us to achieve stability is to participate in the lunacy of single-family-home ownership. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32059201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32059201 (my earlier comment about deciding driving for "Rideshare" companies didn't make financial sense)

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> The entire innovation of ridesharing was taxi dispatch, with a smartphone. It was only a slight incremental improvement over the existing state-of-the art. No, we already had taxi dispatch. The innovation was in giving up on the strict numeric quota for how many taxis were allowed to exist.
- taxicabjesus 4y ago
  NYC had quotas - "taxi medallions". Arizona had minimal regulations: vehicle safety inspections, meter accuracy, driver screening. The big taxi companies were mostly trusted to do their own regulatory compliance for their fleets and drivers. Anyone could start their own taxi company - I understood the state agency was quite helpful. I had no interest in making a career of transportation, so I just drove for the company enough to pay my bills, while I worked on my other endeavors.
- rhino369 4y ago
  Deregulation helped. But the Uber dispatch was way better. Ubers would actually show up and you could see them coming on gps. For a while in Chicago, uberX was banned but you could use Uber to hail a registered cab. It was still much better than trying to use dispatch.
scarface74 4y ago
The more affluent neighborhoods don’t want public transportation linked to the “inner city” because it brings “those people” in.
catiopatio 4y ago
> the mistake of building communities for cars instead of people I’m a person, and the community I find most healthy to live in is one where I can walk out my front door, breath fresh air, experience nature, and am sufficiently isolated from my neighbors that we can largely do what we like without negatively impacting each other. This requires a car, and single-family home ownership. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I’d never voluntarily live in the kind of unhealthy sardine can city you desire.
- mikem170 4y ago
  What about a dense village or town, with nature nearby that you could walk to in 10 minutes? I wonder if single family home communities might be nicer if the homes were clustered more closely together and surrounded by natural areas. But having only single family homes might not be dense enough to get the advantages that come with more density. It's a real shame that zoning for single family homes, lot sizes, and parking requirements became so uniform across the country. It's not easy to do anything different. Making things worse the taxpayers in more dense areas end up subsidizing the infrastructure build-outs in less dense areas, through state taxes and grants [0], along with other car-related subsidies talked about in this thread paid for by all taxpayers. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    Density brings advantages to industry, technology, labor markets, factories, and infrastructure in general, but I’m unconvinced it represents an advantage when we’re talking about the optimal size and density for healthy human communities, and the mental and physical health of the families that comprise them. I personally benefit from having enough room that I can live independently, without the kind of constant oversight and strictures required to keep high-density environs operating. I’d even suggest that this is almost universally true, and that density represents a cultural pathology in service of industrialization, not human beings. That said, I won’t begrudge anyone the same right to live how they want; I merely take umbrage at the pervasive undercurrent of opinion that how I live is not just wrong, but that state authority and cultural power should be leveraged to coerce or force a more correct choice.
agumonkey 4y ago
so how much of Uber "success" is due to fitting the neo startup era flagship role ?
RandallBrown 4y ago
> The entire innovation of ridesharing was taxi dispatch, with a smartphone. This is why I've never understood the taxi companies whining and complaining about Uber and Lyft breaking the rules. These companies could have done the exact same thing and crushed Uber and Lyft because they already had large presences in their city.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  In many (maybe most) cities, there are regulations that taxis have to follow. If you want to drive a cab in NYC, you have to buy a medallion. Uber simply ignored those regulations, and ran unlicensed taxicab operations. While taxicab companies were paying for limited numbers of medallions, charging fixed rates, etc., Uber was just doing whatever it wanted. Even if you think the regulations don't make sense, you can see why the taxicab companies are upset.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    No, what happened was that technology obsoleted the laws that said "A taxi is something you hail on the street". Even in NYC, there were car services predating Uber that you call and arrange a ride, and those drivers were not required to have medallions. The medallion was needed to pick up rides on the street. With the advent of portable phones, cities did not update their regulations (which cities do?) and so Uber exploited this loophole to create a car service that you requested with your phone, but which had a similar (but not identical) user experience to hailing a cab. In fact, the first Ubers were designed as a car service -- it was higher end cars and the cheaper UberX happened only later. Even today, you still can't hail an Uber. That would make it a taxi. Every ride is pre-arranged over the phone. So it's not true that Uber just ignored the rules for taxis, because Ubers aren't taxis. They are a car service. It's the cities that missed the whole mobile phone phenomena and didn't update their laws. In other words, Uber was a bit more sophisticated about this than "Let's just ignore the taxi laws" -- and understanding the difference is kinda important. I can join you in criticizing Uber, but they are not cartoonishly bad, and they did actually think these issues through.
    - 4y ago
kortilla 4y ago
> Modern Phoenix is entirely dependent on cars and air conditioning. It's not very human-friendly. What is with the obsession with air conditioning in Phoenix? New York is dependent on heat moreso than Phoenix is dependent on air conditioning. Does that make it “not very human friendly”? People seem to think “air conditioning is evil technology” while simultaneously thinking “obviously we need heating to live in otherwise uninhabitable locations”. > It was only a slight incremental improvement over the existing state-of-the art. This downplays the real-time and feedback mechanisms. Cab drivers behaved like grade A pieces of shit because there was no rating mechanism to encourage anything else. You may have had GPS dispatch, but people couldn’t get a real time ETA nor was there any actual commitment to pick that person up.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> The entire innovation of ridesharing was taxi dispatch, with a smartphone. It was only a slight incremental improvement over the existing state-of-the art. No, we already had taxi dispatch. The innovation was in giving up on the strict numeric quota for how many taxis were allowed to exist.

taxicabjesus 4y ago
NYC had quotas - "taxi medallions". Arizona had minimal regulations: vehicle safety inspections, meter accuracy, driver screening. The big taxi companies were mostly trusted to do their own regulatory compliance for their fleets and drivers. Anyone could start their own taxi company - I understood the state agency was quite helpful. I had no interest in making a career of transportation, so I just drove for the company enough to pay my bills, while I worked on my other endeavors.
rhino369 4y ago
Deregulation helped. But the Uber dispatch was way better. Ubers would actually show up and you could see them coming on gps. For a while in Chicago, uberX was banned but you could use Uber to hail a registered cab. It was still much better than trying to use dispatch.

scarface74 4y ago

The more affluent neighborhoods don’t want public transportation linked to the “inner city” because it brings “those people” in.

catiopatio 4y ago

> the mistake of building communities for cars instead of people I’m a person, and the community I find most healthy to live in is one where I can walk out my front door, breath fresh air, experience nature, and am sufficiently isolated from my neighbors that we can largely do what we like without negatively impacting each other. This requires a car, and single-family home ownership. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I’d never voluntarily live in the kind of unhealthy sardine can city you desire.

mikem170 4y ago
What about a dense village or town, with nature nearby that you could walk to in 10 minutes? I wonder if single family home communities might be nicer if the homes were clustered more closely together and surrounded by natural areas. But having only single family homes might not be dense enough to get the advantages that come with more density. It's a real shame that zoning for single family homes, lot sizes, and parking requirements became so uniform across the country. It's not easy to do anything different. Making things worse the taxpayers in more dense areas end up subsidizing the infrastructure build-outs in less dense areas, through state taxes and grants [0], along with other car-related subsidies talked about in this thread paid for by all taxpayers. [0] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
- catiopatio 4y ago
  Density brings advantages to industry, technology, labor markets, factories, and infrastructure in general, but I’m unconvinced it represents an advantage when we’re talking about the optimal size and density for healthy human communities, and the mental and physical health of the families that comprise them. I personally benefit from having enough room that I can live independently, without the kind of constant oversight and strictures required to keep high-density environs operating. I’d even suggest that this is almost universally true, and that density represents a cultural pathology in service of industrialization, not human beings. That said, I won’t begrudge anyone the same right to live how they want; I merely take umbrage at the pervasive undercurrent of opinion that how I live is not just wrong, but that state authority and cultural power should be leveraged to coerce or force a more correct choice.

agumonkey 4y ago

so how much of Uber "success" is due to fitting the neo startup era flagship role ?

RandallBrown 4y ago

> The entire innovation of ridesharing was taxi dispatch, with a smartphone. This is why I've never understood the taxi companies whining and complaining about Uber and Lyft breaking the rules. These companies could have done the exact same thing and crushed Uber and Lyft because they already had large presences in their city.

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
In many (maybe most) cities, there are regulations that taxis have to follow. If you want to drive a cab in NYC, you have to buy a medallion. Uber simply ignored those regulations, and ran unlicensed taxicab operations. While taxicab companies were paying for limited numbers of medallions, charging fixed rates, etc., Uber was just doing whatever it wanted. Even if you think the regulations don't make sense, you can see why the taxicab companies are upset.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  No, what happened was that technology obsoleted the laws that said "A taxi is something you hail on the street". Even in NYC, there were car services predating Uber that you call and arrange a ride, and those drivers were not required to have medallions. The medallion was needed to pick up rides on the street. With the advent of portable phones, cities did not update their regulations (which cities do?) and so Uber exploited this loophole to create a car service that you requested with your phone, but which had a similar (but not identical) user experience to hailing a cab. In fact, the first Ubers were designed as a car service -- it was higher end cars and the cheaper UberX happened only later. Even today, you still can't hail an Uber. That would make it a taxi. Every ride is pre-arranged over the phone. So it's not true that Uber just ignored the rules for taxis, because Ubers aren't taxis. They are a car service. It's the cities that missed the whole mobile phone phenomena and didn't update their laws. In other words, Uber was a bit more sophisticated about this than "Let's just ignore the taxi laws" -- and understanding the difference is kinda important. I can join you in criticizing Uber, but they are not cartoonishly bad, and they did actually think these issues through.
  - 4y ago

kortilla 4y ago

> Modern Phoenix is entirely dependent on cars and air conditioning. It's not very human-friendly. What is with the obsession with air conditioning in Phoenix? New York is dependent on heat moreso than Phoenix is dependent on air conditioning. Does that make it “not very human friendly”? People seem to think “air conditioning is evil technology” while simultaneously thinking “obviously we need heating to live in otherwise uninhabitable locations”. > It was only a slight incremental improvement over the existing state-of-the art. This downplays the real-time and feedback mechanisms. Cab drivers behaved like grade A pieces of shit because there was no rating mechanism to encourage anything else. You may have had GPS dispatch, but people couldn’t get a real time ETA nor was there any actual commitment to pick that person up.